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Tag Archives: H.F. Johnson Jr.

Three dozen representatives of Wright sites, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, met at the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread in late March for a “Wright Site Directors Summit.” Topics included creating Wright mobile apps, presenting sites in 3-D on tablets, strategies for innovative branding and marketing, and accommodating guests with disabilities. The three-day meeting was sponsored by the two foundations and the Building Conservancy.Libby Garrison of the Marin County Civic Center tells how their mobile app was created.

Michael Ditmer (Still Bend) and Heather Sabin (Monona Terrace) confer. Ditmer is the new president of Wright in Wisconsin. Mike Lilek, left rear, of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block talks with John Waters Preservation Programs Manager of the Building Conservancy. Kathryn Burton (Gordon House) is also at the table.

Stuart Graff, President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, contributes to the discussion after a presentation. Jim Ladwig, center, (SC Johnson and Son) and Don Dekker (Meyer May House) take notes and listen.

“The House,” built in the mid-1950s adjacent to Wingspread, became the home of Mr. and Mrs. H.F. Johnson Jr. before they donated Wingspread itself to the newly-created Johnson Foundation in 1959. It has more space for conferences than the Wright-designed Wingspread. It has been said that Mrs. (Irene Purcell) Johnson was never comfortable in Wingspread because it was designed for another woman…Johnson’s wife who died during construction. National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Court of Justice – and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy – are among the entities that evolved from Johnson Foundation conferences.

The swimming pool at Wingspread (shown covered by a tarp in 2009) is an integral part of the grounds. It was filled with water, but was ornamental for many years, rather than being used, when it was drained after leaks were discovered more than 10 years ago.

The fireplace on the pool deck:

The pool is now being renovated, to be filled and again be a water feature of the house.

The are two wonderful anecdotes about the pool. The first was told by the late Sam Johnson, whose father, H.F. Johnson Jr., commissioned the home by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1937. Sam Johnson in 2000:

The Johnsons would be moving more than five miles from their home on Racine’s south side, near the SC Johnson offices and factory, to their new home in Wind Point, beyond the city limits. Sam feared not seeing his friends anymore. He had no reason to worry: once his friends learned Sam’s new home had a swimming pool, they were anxious to bike out to visit him.

The second anecdote was told by Edgar Tafel, the young apprentice who was in his mid-20s when Wright trusted him to supervise construction of the SC Johnson Administration Building and then of Wingspread. Tafel, one of the original Taliesin Fellowship apprentices (1932-1941) recalled agreeing to a change in the location of some plumbing for the pool in consultation with contractor Ben Wilteschek while Wright was in the Soviet Union.

Tafel at this Greenwich Village townhouse in 2007:

Wright was livid about the change when he visited the construction site after returning to the United States. Tafel kept backing up to get away from the angry architect, and fell into the excavation for the pool. He said Wright glared down at him and said, “That serves you right.”

This is how Jameson Gagnepain’s adventure at Wingspread starts: unloading two custom-built wood crates and four cardboard boxes, all stuffed with about 50,000 LEGO bricks. In two hours the bricks will have been reassembled into a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 14,000 sq. ft. home for Herbert F. Johnson, Jr., which will be displayed on the second floor of Wingspread probably into December.

The model is stunning in its detail, the statistics -at the end of the story- are staggering.

First, Gagnepain and his wife, Amy, assemble the five-foot square table the model will sit on.

Each storage box is carefully thought out, explains Gagnepain, “I pack everything as tightly as I can… It’s a little like Russian nesting dolls in there. Lots of sections fitting inside other sections, and every box has shelves in it to make good use of space.”

Gagnepain starts with a blank “canvas,” if you will, a broad expanse of green LEGOs representing the landscape around the house. There is no hesitation as he spends the next two hours assembling the model of the house.

He works in IT for a medical supplies company, but LEGOs have been his passion since he was young. The colorful plastic bricks were his expected presents for as long as he can remember. Amy is so understanding, he says, that she suggested their wedding have a LEGO theme.

Gagnepain scoured the Internet for photos of what the house looked like when it was built, and then took notes during a visit to Wingspread. His biggest challenge was in fashioning daughter Karen Johnson’s cantilevered balcony at the north end of the house. “It took me ages to get right, getting the wood texture right. I built it three or four different ways. I got it right then dropped it and had to start over.” He says the playroom at the east end was another challenge because of the dearth of photos of what it originally looked like.

Amy pours tiny blue bricks into the swimming pool to simulate water. Gagnepain was careful to even show the different levels in the swimming pool.

A LEGO car, which brings to mind a Mercedes sedan that Wright owned, is parked at the front door.

The crown of the model is the roof over the Great Room, with its Crow’s Nest:

If the model is too detailed for some people, they can enjoy the bare-bones LEGO Wingspread he fashioned, as well:

There is even a red Wright “signature tile.” As for the lack of a Frank Lloyd Wright figure, Gagnepain says he will make one as soon as there is a LEGO porkpie hat.

Gagnepain and the model are feature in Tom Alphin’s newly released book The LEGO Architect.

LEGO Wingspread by the numbers:

Construction took 500 hours over six months (“Too long,” jokes Amy)

There are an estimated 50,000 LEGO bricks in an estimated 100 different shaped bricks. There are seven color in the building. Most of the home’s Cherokee red bricks are represented by about 10,000 “1×2 plate in Dark Orange” bricks. The grounds and foliage use the seven colors from the building as well as an additional eight colors.

Wright’s 1910 Wasmuth Portfolio is the theme of the fourth annual exhibition in the “At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright” gallery in Fortaleza Hall on the SC Johnson campus in Racine, Wis. Fifty lithographs from the portfolio and artifacts from the Dana House and the Heath House, among others, are exhibited:

Weekend tours now also include H.F. Johnson Jr.’s office in the Wright-designed Administration Building (1936). The office has been refurbished with period furniture and company artifacts for the tours. Johnson commissioned Wright to designed the Administration Building, the SC Johnson Research Tower (1943/44), Wingspread (his home, 1937), the unrealized Racine YWCA (1949/50), an unrealized remodeling at the Racine Airport (1941), and several unrealized buildings at Wingspread.